A Brighter Past
by Firelord Lionheart
Summary: Rolfe, now a soldier in the German Army, is fatally shot by American troops in Normandy. As he's dying, he reflects on his past, a past that was so much brighter than the dark present.


A/N: This one-shot was inspired by a scene from Band of Brothers where they find a dead German soldier with an edelweiss flower. And when I think edelweiss, I think Sound of Music, which I saw again this year for the first time since I was 11.

Disclaimer: I don't own Sound of Music; it belongs to Rodgers and Hammerstein.

_June 6__th__, 1944, Saint-Marie du Mont, Normandy, France 08:45 CET_

He lay there in the woods of Saint-Marie du Mont, a small rural village in Normandy. Unteroffizier Rolfe Gruber laid there, his life fading slowly but surely. All he could feel was the pain of the bullet wounds in his torso, shoulder and arm, his warm blood trickling down his body. This was where he would die, here in Northern France while American and British forces advanced relentlessly into occupied Europe to bring an end to the Third Reich. It was only the beginning, as Oberst Schmidt made quite clear. However, Rolfe knew that he would not live to see beyond what history would call "D-Day." He knew this was the end for him, an end he probably deserved. He would be leaving this world with many regrets and could not help but reflect on a time when everything was so much brighter.

Rolfe had been born in Salzburg to Albert and Hedwig Gruber, a couple who made a living running a butcher shop. He had a pretty normal childhood for a boy growing up in Austria in the 1920's and '30's. He went to school, earned extra money for his parents by delivering newspapers, and did not concern himself with the post-Great War politics of Europe. In his free time, he would play with his friends and tease the local girls.

In 1933, when Austrian-born Adolf Hitler took power in Germany, his parents were enthralled by his powerful speeches on the radio and how Germany seemed to get back on its feet after more than a decade of disgrace after World War I. Rolfe's father had joined a local National Socialist movement and would regale the family with Hitler's writings every night at dinner. Hitler had become something of a hero to Rolfe who was taken in by the Führer's writings on how Aryans like the Germans and Austrians were the Master Race and how the Jews and other subhuman cultures of Europe were a hindrance to its prosperity.

It was by chance in 1937 that Rolfe had been given a job of delivering telegrams to the important citizens of Salzburg, including local war hero, Captain Georg von Trapp who commanded U-boats in World War I. That had given him the opportunity to meet von Trapp's oldest daughter Liesl. Thinking back, Rolfe realized that it was her innocence and naivete that he fell for rather than her looks. Granted, she was pretty, but rather average in the looks department. In the months before the Anschluss, she had completely fallen for him and he missed no opportunity to see her. Besides, if he had gotten into the good graces of Georg von Trapp by being in a relationship with his daughter, then his career prospects would greatly increase. Sadly, von Trapp was fiercely opposed to Nazism and the idea of his beloved Austria being annexed into Germany.

After von Trapp married his children's governess, Maria, the Anschluss took effect and Rolfe had been inducted into the Hitler Youth but Herr Zeller, the Nazi Gauleiter of Salzburg allowed him to keep his job of delivering telegrams. By then Rolfe was fully indoctrinated into the Nazi ideology and had helped weed out the remaining Jews of the city who were subsequently deported. War was coming and the Führer wanted von Trapp in the Kriegsmarine. Rolfe entrusted Liesl to deliver the orders from Berlin to her father who had come home from his and Maria's honeymoon in Paris. Rolfe had a sneaking suspicion that von Trapp would not obey the orders and was among the unit that accompanied Zeller to the nearest airbase to fly the Captain over to Germany or arrest him and his family. However, the von Trapps were to perform in the Salzburg Music Festival and Rolfe could not believe that he was the only one who did not see this as a coincidence. As it turned out, his intuition was correct. They used this festival as an opportunity to escape.

Since that fateful night in 1938, at the Salzburg Music Festival, there was not a night that went by where he did not think of Liesl. Was she still alive? Did she make it across the border to Switzerland? Had that American paratrooper not gunned him down, would Rolfe have ever seen her again? Had the von Trapps not escaped, Rolfe would have been able to attend the officers' academy. However, by letting Captain von Trapp intimidate him, the Lieutenant placed all the blame on him. "Your weakness allowed them time to escape! Now that traitor and his family are probably already in Switzerland!" As a result, he had been all but expelled from the Hitler Youth and forced to join the Wehrmacht as a foot soldier.

In 1939, he had been part of the Army Group that captured Poland with absurd ease. While the German forces rolled into the country with tanks, planes, and heavy artillery, the Poles still fought on horses. It was absolutely pathetic. In the years that followed, Rolfe had served in Erwin Rommel's Afrikakorps, fighting in El Alamein. In Christmas in 1943, after the Germans were forced to withdraw from Africa, Rolfe was given two weeks leave to see his family.

Salzburg was barely recognizable. There were more Nazis than citizens occupying the streets. The historic city felt like a prison. Rolfe did not want to admit it at the time but the Germans were losing the war. The Russians were advancing from the east, Africa had been lost, and now the Americans and British were preparing to invade Europe. It was a very quiet and awkward Christmas with his parents. Rolfe had even checked the old von Trapp mansion to find that a high-ranking SS officer now occupied it. By the time he had to leave back to his unit, Rolfe had taken a single edelweiss flower with him…a simple reminder of a time when everything was so much brighter. Edelweiss, a flower men would climb mountains for to give to women as a symbol of their love. Edelweiss, a symbol of the might of Austria and a song sung in defiance of the Anschluss. Edelweiss, its soft petals that were his only connection that he could ever have to his Liesl.

Rommel was ordered to oversee the building of the Atlantic Wall and make sure it had top-notch defenses. Out of all the Generals Rolfe had served under, Erwin Rommel was the best one. He cared about his soldiers and reminded him of Georg von Trapp in a way if he had accepted his position in the Wehrmacht. There were whispers of Rommel secretly telling Hitler that he should just surrender and try to negotiate with the Allies but that had to have been a lie because there were now more soldiers than ever in France prepared to halt the imminent Allied invasion.

In the early hours of that very day, June 6th, 1944, American and British planes soared over Normandy dropping literally thousands of paratroopers throughout the region. Rolfe and his squad waited in the trees to ambush the Americans, many of whom seemed to have landed in the wrong area. Unfortunately, one of Rolfe's soldier's rifles jammed, alerting the makeshift enemy squad to their presence. Before they could even react, the Americans fired at them. The last thing Rolfe Gruber had seen before three bullets tore through his body was a pair of furious blue eyes, a helmet with a spade stamped on it, and an eagle patch on the soldier's sleeve.

As he laid there, the darkness of death beginning to overpower him, he felt a hand reach into the pocket of his jacket where he kept the edelweiss flower. "What's this?" he heard the American asking. Rolfe knew a bit of English, so he understood what the Americans were saying.

"It's edelweiss, sir," another soldier whispered. "It grows in the mountains of Austria. Centuries ago, Austrian knights used to climb mountains to get these flowers for their girlfriends. It was a symbol of courage and shit. Wish it were that easy back home, going up a mountain to get a flower but no, you gotta be part of a sport team to be recognized by the ladies. Well, guess Helga won't be seeing her dear Hans again." Rolfe was above such petty insults but that slight against Liesl made him want to shoot that American pig where he stood and he would have done it had he not been fatally wounded.

"Real funny," the first American replied sarcastically. "Now let's go, Harper. We gotta meet up with the others before the landings start."

"Yes, sir."

The Americans left and Rolfe felt the pain subsiding. If this was how death was like, then it wasn't so bad. As Rolfe drew in his last breath, memories of his childhood, his friends, his parents, and Liesl's lips against his flashed before his eyes like reels in a motion picture...memories of a time when everything was so much brighter.

A/N: There it is. This did not totally come out like how I wanted it to but I've been meaning to do a one-shot like this for a while now. I've talked to friends about the Sound of Music and whenever Rolfe came up, I would say "I hope that Nazi fuck faced the working end of Russian artillery or American rifles." But I wrote this fic to show that he's still human and that he does regret almost getting the von Trapps killed, but he's still very much a Nazi.


End file.
